Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps - The Capitious Critic

"Jump! You fuckers!" - Even though the photo of a piece of cardboard bearing this invitation - held up by a demonstrator on Wall Street in the height of the financial crunch - came to worldwide fame, only few bankers obliged. Oliver Stone, avowing leftist and Chavez/Castro/Morales sympathiser, turns this fantasy into reality in his sequel to the 1987 Wall Street. After the crisis-related suicide of his mentor Louis (Frank Langella), investment banker Jacob Moore (played uninspiringly by Shia LaBeouf) vows vengeance against those responsible - ruthless capitalists who accept thousands of redundancies to make a quick buck. He sabotages an important oil extraction deal, earning him the attention of the most important bank's CEO (Josh Brolin), who promptly offers him a job. At the same time, his girlfriend (Carey Mulligan) must cope with her father's release from jail - the legendary Gordon Gekko (still Michael Douglas), who seems to have made a U-turn and publically warns against financial cataclysm, all the while promoting his new book.

Given the films topicality and Stone's political views you would expect a feature film version of Michael Moore's outstanding Capitalism: A Love Story. Instead, in an attempt to portray the meaninglessness of Ducatis, Bvlgari rings, tailor-made suits and Manhattan lofts, the director gets carried away and involuntarily expresses a fascination for such earthly pleasures. To compensate for this consumerist porn, Stone repeatedly shows us children playing with soap bubbles - to convince even non-attentive viewers of the film's profundity and symbolism. A supporting act by Susan Sarandon and cameo by Charlie Sheen (no doubt a favour to his old friend Oliver) add little substance. Money Never Sleeps continues Stone's spell of mediocre films that has lasted for more than a decade. The fact that Stone's last award nomination dates back to 1995 and Nixon pretty much sums up the situation.

Blow Up (Must See) - Rob Culpepper

I like a good meta film. Film about film. Looking to learn how to look. Blow Up, Antonioni's materpiece, is about just that: looking, the implications of looking, the exploitation of looking. Don't let that scare you off, because the film tells a great story apart from the interpretations of what it means. But like all great art, Blow Up works on so many levels simultaneously that every time you watch it, you'll pick up something else, learn something new.

Blow Up is about the sexy life of a young fashion photographer in 1960s London. He's rich and surrounded by beautiful women who will do anything to have him take their picture, but he's bored with his life. Then, by happenstance, he makes some photographs that reveal a mystery. As he continues to study the pictures (he's interrupted a couple times by beautiful women who, um, end up playfully naked), he realizes he's caught up in something much bigger than just making pictures. Antonioni's visual storytelling is flawless here. There is about stretch of about 15 minutes where he tells the story without dialog. Just camera angles. It's intense and amazing. Think about telling a story silently, with the only sounds being running water in the darkroom and shoes scuffing on the floor as Thomas (the photographer) moves around his studio. He does this a couple times through out the film and he pulls it off masterfully each time.

Music by Herbie Hancock, a live scene with the Yardbirds (Jeff Beck smashes a guitar, The Who-style), sharp dialog, lots of really interesting camera angles, a band of mimes, Vanessa Redgrave+Veruschka+Jane Birkin, etc.

Blow Up is a masterpiece. Watch it.

Inception - Tim J.

Great expectations are a cinephile's curse. Which of you can't recall at least a handful of instances when you'd been looking forward to a film like a child to Christmas only to be left wondering how things could go so terribly wrong? Being let down by a sequel or an actor is to be expected but when you choose a film on the basis of its director you are treading on thin ice, always prepared to be disillusioned by his next film. The Mist, Eyes Wide Shut and Tetro are a few of the films that should never have seen the light of day, at least not bearing the names Darabont, Kubrick and Coppola.

What better time for Chris Nolan to finally let us down. After grossing tens of millions with low-budget film Memento and hundreds of millions with his latest big budget film even less pessimist moviegoers must have prepared to come down to earth in the face of a sweeping $160 million summer blockbuster. But as in the case of The Dark Knight, Nolan has managed to produced an epic that does not take its audience for stupid.

When it comes to extracting secrets from you while you're dreaming, Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) is the best there is. If this sounds like an improbable job description to you think about the possibilities this line of work offers. Torturing someone for information may work as well but you don't know whether the info is correct and since the victims knows you know if will probably change its plans. In dream espionage however the subject never knows what hit it or even that something did. Cobb is ready to quit for good when a wealthy businessman Saito (Ken Watanabe) offers him a final gig that would allow Cobb to return to the USA and see his children, which he has been unable to do since becoming the prime suspect in the death of his wife (Marion Cotillard). This job however is a lot more difficult than his previous ones since instead of stealing an idea he is to plant one in the victim's subconscious, so deep that he believes it is his own - a process called Inception. To this end, spoiled energy syndicate heir Robert Fischer (played brilliantly by Cillian Murphy) is preyed upon by Cobb and his team so they can plant in him the idea to split up his syndicate, which would make Saito world market leader.
So far, so complicated? That's just the beginning of a two and a half hour-movie that flies by like an episode of 24 without the shaky camera. When you see the team hook themselves up to a machine to enter the dream world you are inevitably reminded of the Matrix but Inception makes that film, once my favourite, look like a video game for 12-year-olds.

Although most of the action takes place in dreams Nolan does not resort to CGI landscapes a la Lovely Bones. Instead almost all scenes were shot on set, with widget spinning entire corridors and lounges and dolls posing for sleeping protagonists. And his efforts are not in vain. The viewer is not only bedazzled by the cinematography but also constantly wondering 'how the heck did he do that?' Which makes it one of a few films of which I can't wait to see the making of. In times where stuntmen have been replaced by the more expensive but less demanding bits and bytes it is refreshing to see images with natural texture and weight.

Unless the Academy gets it completely wrong (which as we know never happens, nudge nudge) Inception will be nominated for at least a couple of the following: Best Picture (which would be fun as the producers are Nolan and his wife), Director, Film Editing, Visual Effects, Original Score, Original Screenplay and Cinematography. You will have noticed that none of these concern acting skills. Don't get me wrong, the cast is all but perfect. From experience however I must acknowledge that it is hard to score an Oscar or even a nomination without doing a funny voice (Bullock, Winslet, Whitaker), a handicap (Hanks, DiCaprio, Day-Lewis) or singing (Foxx, Bridges, Phoenix). But don't give up hope, Leo. Pesci, Clooney, Hanks, Brody, Penn, Washington and Spacey all managed to contradict this theory and so can you. It is also likely that Marion Cotillard will be nominated for Best Supporting Actress or even Lead Actress, depending on what mood the jury is in. Anyone of these would be well-deserved. As an Englishman, Chris Nolan might receive even more acclaim at the BAFTAs.

As a captious critic I have of course been pondering what flaws Inception has. Believe me, there aren't many. Pointing out what's wrong with Inception is like pointing out what's wrong with President Obama. In theory you could do it but, hey, they're by far the best we've seen in a long time. So why ruin the moment? I doubt that 2010 will see another film as good as this and am planning to see Inception again this week, expecting it to be even better than the first time. Because yes I can.

Wall Street - KDJ

Oliver Stone movies are kind of all over the place. From Natural Born Killers to The Doors to Larry Flynt to the original Wall Street and now to this one -- covering lots of ground and lots of issues later, I think this is one of the best. I think everyone that reads the news, especially during the beginning phases of the recession, wondered about the moment when the dudes that decided everything acutally had to decide something. I heard Oliver interviewed and he wanted to stay away from this sort of scene as much as possible. He didn't want to directly portray subprime, crappy loans on a huge scale. He wanted to the fall-out to be more character driven, individual, able-to-relate-to, or whatever. But gosh, when I hear the number 700 billion I am always in complete amazement thinking about the dudes that first uttered the words, we need 700 billion dollars - we these millionaire investment bankers - need 700 billion dollars. Cause, man, and I think this is why the plot of this movie moves so well, is that there is some serious Greek drama going on. There is so much under the table, so much behind the curtain of both a bailout and a movie about a bailout of this magnitude. We, the viewer are forced to piece it together for ourselves and just as this can be difficult in real life, so to has Stone captured the difficultly of seeing how things play out when there isn't one to blame or one to save us or one to explain it all for us. I thought this movie was great. The first one was monumental and has become seasoned, the second comes along in stride with the help of some slicker technology and flashy directing - much like market shares; the value is hard to pinpoint without a rumor or a vilifying story, only this time, Sheen appears un-wizened.

The Town - Rob Culpepper

I'm not sure if Ben Affleck is a good actor or not. I think we can all agree that he's a decent director. I'm not saying he's ever going to win an Academy Award for either. However, I think he plays a decent character when he basically plays himself: a likable guy with street smarts but also an overarching sense of what's right. In other words, he can see the specific but not lose sight of the universal. I don't actually know if that's how he is in real life, but let's just say his character in The Town is much more Good Will Hunting than Pearl Harbor.

So Affleck starred in and also directed this movie, which is no small feat. And the movie is pretty good. There's tons of shooting, some really intense and heart-pounding moments, some decent dialogue, and a good story that develops between Affleck's character (Doug McCrae) and Rebecca Hall's (Claire Keesy). Speaking of Rebecca Hall, you will recognize her from The Prestige and Vicky Christina Barcelona (she was the other girl). She is introduced in the first heist, and then becomes the tug at McCrae's heart that leads him to question his questionable line of work.

Other notable people in the film: Blake Lively (she's in my top 5), Jon Hamm (who plays a total douche of an FBI agent), Jeremy Renner (plays a rough dude you always associate with Boston/Irish/gang stories), and Chris Cooper (he's always a home run, in my opinion).

So now to sell you on the film: It's worth watching, no more no less. It's a heist flick, so you know you're going to get to watch people steal money in cool ways. It has a little romance in it. It certainly has some complexity that a straight Shoot 'em Up film doesn't have. Although, the issue of loyalty to brother/friend/neighborhood is quite common in movies about local crime. Now that I think about it, The Town doesn't really do anything new in the realm of cinema. But it's an interesting story and it's told well. So if you've got $10 and a couple of hours to burn, check it out.

*I was recently in Boston visiting Buck Snodgrass among others, and I can say that having a grasp of the geography of Boston is helpful. So maybe look at a map before you head into the theater.

The Social Network - A. Shipp

Virtual or Physical - Commentary on The Social Network

I was fortunate enough to get sneak peak passes to Facebook's unofficial story, The Social Network. I want to preface I will do my best not to spoil the movie; but then again even if you read this a lot of people went and saw Titanic, and thoroughly enjoyed it.


The movie is good, I would definitely recommend it. The movie has a healthy dose of the depositions of the two legal battles Zuckerberg battled in the early years of Facebook. They portray Zuckerberg, as a young arrogant jerk, who doesn't care much about anyone else. (I don't think this is an accurate portrayal, but it does allow for some hilarious one-liners.)

When not in depositions the movie shows how Facebook was created at Harvard, the beginning of the formal company on the east coast, and their eventual move out west to Palo Alto. Through everything there was a very consistent theme ~ Hold onto your ideas

I went into the movie, not knowing what to think. As a PR professional I praise Facebook for allowing companies to interact with interested publics, however as an everyday person I have had an underlying feeling since the rise of Facebook and other social networking sites, many people get comfortable and stagnant in the virtual world.

Whether this is 100% true or not, I feel Zuckerberg created Facebook in reaction to being shunned from Harvard (mainstream) society. Essentially, he created a virtual world that allows a high level of connectivity, without the hassle of the awkwardness that can accompany human communication.



This frightens me. Is Facebook an incredible way for people to make connections and sustain relationships ~ OR ~ Is Facebook a tool people use to guard themselves from rejection? Human connection can be awkward, weird, and even boring, but it can also be all those amazing things that make life incredible.

So I pose this question to you ~ Do you feel more comfortable connecting to people virtually or physically?

Look forward to interacting (Virtually AND Physically)

Until next time, whether it's B2B or B2C it's all Business to Person

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World - Robert Culpepper

I can't believe no one has written about Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. I am behind the curve as I'm sure it's not even in theaters anymore (I saw it at a dollar theater over the weekend). However, this movie kicks ass and I rate it as a Must See.

For one, it's an unbelievable work of the imagination. This movie does what a bunch of other comic book-based movies try to do. All the elements are there: sound effects written onto the screen, quick scene changes, graphic camera angles, and multiple camera shots at the same time. It pulls this off without being cliché. The use of CGI is good and you can't tell what's real and what's not. So things that are impossible in real life (flying, crazy action sequences, stuff getting smashed, etc) look totally normal in the movie...just like they do in comics. And they fit the whole vibe of the film, so that even the most outlandish elements look right at home.

That's probably what makes this movie so fun. It puts the elements of comics (and video games too) in the real world in a way that you don't notice them as odd or out of place. Speaking of being out of place, I thought it would be hard to see Michael Cera in this film. He's no action star, if you know his body type. But he actually pulls it off really well, in a very Everyman kind of way. Maybe in a kind of Peter Parker way. It helps that the film is full of small, hilarious details. The dialogue is quick and witty, and no opportunity to throw in a look, or early 90s reference, or quip, is missed. As a whole, the movie was really well cast. And Jason Schwartman is brilliant. I think we all know that.

Good comic books always spoke to the human condition in profound ways. While Scott Pilgrim vs. The World is a funny movie, it has moral underpinnings. But like a good movies (and in good comic books and good literature) the 'lesson' isn't so overt as to be annoying or off-putting. Or at least when it comes out, it doesn't feel preachy.

Just go watch it. It's one of the most fun movies I've ever seen.

Birmingham Film Festival - R. Culpepper & SCJ. Simmons

A podcast by my good friends Rob Culpepper and Jacob Sim-City Jesse Simmons. Check it here.

The Eclipse - JAK

Full Disclosure: this review exists solely to make you watch this movie. Anything else you get from this (diversion, chuckles, etc.) is incidental. Kyle told me that I’ve failed if The Eclipse isn’t on your Netflix queue by review’s end. Firstly and secondly: this movie will not ‘change your life’ and it is, from what I know (but what do I know?), not groundbreaking cinema. It is, however, a good movie. And those are rare. It also encourages thought and discussion—rarer still.

Like Martin McDonough’s In Bruges, The Eclipse is the work of a young, talented Irish playwright, Conor McPherson. McPherson has earned a reputation for crafting top-notch stage dramas featuring the supernatural acting within everyday situations. Think Ghostbusters in drama form with a greater emphasis on the inner Slimers and Zules. But maybe that’s a stretch because while McPherson’s plays create a space for devils and ghosts, they are never about devils and ghosts. Rather they focus on the regular people who must confront literal manifestations of the same ghosts who haunt us all.

The everyman in The Eclipse is Michael Farr: good father, recent widower, former boxer, and present volunteer at the Cobh literary festival. Ciaran Hinds plays Farr as a kindly, vulnerable man who is set in opposition to the type of supernatural troubler that Hinds himself devilishly embodied in McPherson’s most successful stage production, The Seafarer. Farr’s first haunting comes in the form of a late-night sound from downstairs. Farr awakens to investigate and sees what appears to be the darkened form of his father-in-law move quickly, eerily, and downright scarily across the room. What makes the scene effective is its simplicity; without the special effects, it looks like an unsettlingly plausible kind of haunting. His father-in-law is neither in the house nor in the grave, but rather in a local nursing home—sad and embittered at the loss of his daughter and the perceived neglect by his son-in-law. His living ghost will visit Farr several more times in increasingly violent confrontations.

The following day the festival begins and Farr meets the visiting novelist that he’ll be chauffeuring around the city. The novelist, played with loveliness and depth by the Norwegian Iben Hjejle of High Fidelity fame, writes about the ghosts that haunt her own life. Farr turns to her for help and a mostly platonic romantic interest develops. Farr’s rival for her attention is another visiting novelist played by Aiden Quinn. Whiny, pretentious, insecure, and allergic to shellfish, Quinn’s Nicholas Holden provides some nice moments of levity. When he, for instance, challenges Farr to a boxing match, we get a breather from the earlier emotional intensity by witnessing the yippy Pekingese (http://tiny.cc/9j9ac) of an author get his comeuppance. If Farr’s relationship with Holden helps alleviate the building tension, then his role as a father ratchets that intensity up to the breaking point. The trauma of Farr’s ordeal shows most poignantly on his daughter’s face; which, frowning with a distress and heartbreak beyond her years, reaffirms that the film’s focus is on human loss, not supernatural warfare. After all, as Hjejle’s character tells us, it’s often us who keep the ghosts present; we can’t let them go.

So, don’t expect a young priest and an old priest for any exorcisms here. Instead of being typical horror movie props, the ubiquitous crosses and Mary statues instead suggest the hope of a much more subtle form of deliverance. Rather than a flashy, final confrontation, the exorcism of Farr’s ghosts requires a process as natural, and indescribably difficult, as grief itself.

Che -KDJ

It takes some energy to make it through parts one and two. However, the energy output matches the goodness intake. Mainly, because of Benicio Del Toro. But also because of the straightforward movie making going on. Soderbergh is more known for coolness yet this movie is not about coolness as much as it is telling the story of a mythic character, as understood by the actors, directors and producers. Che ‘stuff’ is always interesting because its appeal is understood so differently. Soderbergh makes sense of these bunches of ways of seeing and talking about Che. And Del Toro has an arrogance about him that matches how I think of Che, an absolutist mother effer, but still able to meet folks on a human first level.

Che’s appeal and life is super interesting. I’ve read a bunch of crap about Che and by Che. I’m not a Che scholar but I’m really interested in the dude. There are a few things that pique my skull. A.) Che was able to justify killing people. B.) The dude wrote while crazy, exhausting crap was going on around him. C.) He was an incredibly intense dude but he still seemed to, in my way of reading him, relate to people.

A.) Che killing people in order to ‘make things right’ moves Che into another category. Often, Presidents and dictators or politicians or decision makers or whomever, don’t actually, themselves, take someone out. Che took people out. He believed in revolution and he believed in ‘a political system’ enough to substantiate one way of doing stuff over another. His way of doing stuff had the same end goals that Ghandi and MLK had, yet he wanted change quicker than they did. He was an extremist like Paul was an extremist. If every human on earth was not a Christian by the time Paul died then he was going to consider himself a failure. Che wanted every human soul to experience absolute freedom in his lifetime or else he was going to be a failure. The fastest way to gaining converts was to pull up those that needed pulling up and to take down those that needed taking down. In this way, Che killing people separates him and makes everything he writes about truth, virtue, goodness, and freedom really unique and interesting.

B.) On this idea of writing, Che freaking wrote while he was stompin through jungles, while he was cruising around south America, while he was chilling before speaking to the U.N. and while he was surrounded by enemy troops. They make a big deal about this in the movie and I am glad they did. Because it is pretty incredible that he did this. What is more is that what he wrote was really good stuff. He wrote crap that was not so much revolutionary but it was always pertinent and it was always written to make a clear point. It wasn’t as much rambling as it was him trying to make sense of himself and what he was doing and thinking. What comes through in his writings and journals and speeches is an intense love for other people. In the movie, they have him talking to a reporter about how the most important quality for a revolutionary fighter to have is an intense love. He wrote a lot about and to his mother. There is an epic picture of Che hugging his mother in Havannah after they had overthrown the capital. As the voyeurs that we are once a mythic idealogue dies and his/her journals are published after death, we can imagine how much that hug meant to the dude because we know how honestly he encountered his mom in his letters. Che just really connected with people.

C.) The movie makes the point to show Che being about people first and revolution and medicine and whatever else second. He wanted the best for people. Whatever best was, he often questioned the idea of best, he wanted it. He did so much crap but he always did it with people as the end goal. The movie shows him always introducing himself to new people. It also shows him embracing all the guerillas like they were brothers and sisters. I think this is interesting and I think the movie was good for showing this because often super intense people are unable to come back down and just kick it with folks around them. I don’t know for sure if Che truly kicked it with people but it seems that he at least tried to. There is a big difference between trying and actually doing it but the movie made it seem that he did and I liked this about the movie. At least it recognized how necessary this was for the characterization of ‘Che’ and all the possible versions of ‘Che’.

The characterization of Che and Fidel and their fight was seen through a really simple picture, motion picture that is. The simple results as seen by the viewer had to come from a lot of work and doing crap right. The production of this movie really surprised me. It surpised me because it had this appearance of old school movies but it did it well and it did it for a reason. There are a lot of logistics to telling the story of Che from the build-up to leaving the mainland and sailing for Cuba, to battle scenes to the development of Che’s idealogy and mythic figure-ness to his death scene and whatever else. Soderbergh did really well with all this. What he did even better was the orchestration of scenes where Che was meeting new recruits and locals and peasants and then dignitaries in New York. There are a thousand ways to invoke ‘Che’. I think Soderbergh didn’t pick just one way of doing so. I think he used all the ways that it has been done and meshed them all together. In this way you get one way of seeing Che, but I think it is a more informed one way of seeing Che. I don’t think he was trying to prove all the Che lovers and Che haters wrong. I think he just wanted to make a movie about the coolnes of Che’s story.

Benicio is the best actor alive, in my opinion. I think he is in that category where you forget that you are watching a character. He dominated this movie. He even looked like Che. I spoke with my Cuban roommate and my friend from Buenos Aires and both said that he did an Agentinian accent and a Cuban accent perfectly. My Mexican friend told me that his accent in 21 grams was also perfect. What is more, is how cool his accent was in the Usual Suspects. I am all for any movie with this dude in it.

Che parts 1 and 2 are both really great movies. I think it will not ever be noticed as a game changer or anything like that. But it is just a really good movie that was shot well and had some great actors and has a great story.